Tag: constitution

Its been more than 150 years since we were blessed with the gifted authorship of American transcendental author Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson, Thoreau and their school of transcendentalists represented the first school of America spiritual individualism without attachments to any organized religion. Furthermore, their emphasis on the Overlord, or rather, the existence of a spiritual supreme being, or God, resonated with the American tradition of monotheism, evidenced by the constitution. It furtehrmore resonated with the secular community in that it placed less emphasis on superstitions and dogmatic narratives.

The point of this is to emphasize the individualist foundation of America.

My greatest infatuation with America as a first generation immigrant was with Thomas Jefferson. His theories which echoed social libearlism, secularism, education and rational deism, appealed immsenly to me.

I also came upon other theories of individualism like Ayn Rand, which are much more extreme. Ayn Rand, like other philosophers, unfortunately confuses her brand of individualism. It is in fact a theory of racist privilege. Rand was a zionist who depended largely on welfare and aid from the israeli government.

Ideas like socialism and fascism are both becoming popular in america. definitions for these terms are changing day by day because of lower educational levels among constituents. Youtube video comments are becoming the hotbed of american education.

Since the assassination of JFK, we have witnessed America fall into a trap of populism. You are either a neoconservative or a neoconservative; democrat or republican, you support foreign invasions. Both parties are populist. Both parties seek to appeal to the ideological fanaticism of constituents, which is the product of ignorance (passive) and arrogance (active). the republicans appeal to the mass-minded religious nuts; the democrats appeal to the animal loving, overly environmentally paranoid, Wall Street hipsters.

Both social groups, the democratic left wing and the republican right wing constituencies share one thing – economic insecurity. This makes them vulnerable to the forces of collective-group-think and propaganda.

Americans are pawns of a grand puppet scheme strung together by a coalition of religious fanatics who can’t let go a historical grudge and bitter past, ideological fanatics who can’t separate their delusions from their imagination, corporate-cults that can’t survive without income exploitation, and politicians who are the business on this grand stage, selling us their “business models” — though poorly designed. But if the constituency is too dumb to notice, why not?

Economic insecurity has been exacerbated in America, though it always existed. The struggle between America’s colonial past and its desire to form a national identity is evident in the early conflict between those who wished to extend the tradition of capitalist exploitation, and those who wished to balance open markets with a strong state capable of regulating abuses by political and economic elites. This conflict was waged between the federalists and the anti-federalists. Slavery would come into question very late in this conversation of power-sharing and power-limits, to the misfortune of the African-American population, whose grievances remain largely unaddressed even today, 40 years after the civil rights era, and the deaths of both Malcolm and Martin. Today’s Jim Crow is police brutality.

Back to the subject. Economic insecurity. Why? The colonialists won. America was founded on colonialism, so it is only right that capitalism, that is, the benefits of exploitation, took precedence over the need to form a national identity and cater to the welfare of the general American public, in the list of priorities of the American elite.

Today, this struggle continues. But the conflict is more ambiguous, because the manipulative tactics have become more devious and difficult to detect. The masses are in a trance. The individual is dead.

Is this the fate of democracy? The struggle between democracy and republicanism ensues.

The American constituency has grown less patient than ever, and has become more vulnerable to mass-media, propaganda and ideological inconsistency than ever before. Perhaps this is a reflection of America’s desperate attempt to colonize and control other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, Latin America, Central and Southeast Asia. The government has utilized all mechanisms available to manufacture consent for war and arbitrary conflict to secure the elites grasp of power, and to preserve the current political system in place, in the words of Noam Chomsky.

What is that political system?

The majoritarian system of democracy divided us and portrays ideologies as competing against one another. Instead there needs to be a recognition that majoritarianism can often trump the rights of individuals, political, social or economic. What is more important, that majority rules, or that individual rights are preserved? The extent of individual rights are hotly debated, but this is often a tactic too. It should be simple. But politicians want to justify poverty and institutional disenfranchisement so they encourage tensions, racism, and xenophobia. They strip us of our rights to tax funds, and to self-investment. A poor constituency cannot have power. Perhaps that is what the elite desires.

Is majoritarianism the problem? No, the problem is our cultural values have begun to diminish. If they didn’t then the majority would rule in favor of righteous policies, not ones that encourage war and unrest, domestically and abroad.

America is learning to heal from its past, but the scars run deep. The individual still exists, but he is striving perhaps more than ever, to secure his place in the world.

They are ashamed that their disdain for genuine democracy is unfolding.

They scurry to relinquish themselves of associations with one another, and they are desperate to convince the world that their views are not as outrageous as their party platform.

A recipe for failure, it seems.

While Rubio & Bush might seem like the most poise of the candidates; their ideology resonates only with the same constituency amassed by other GOP candidates. Their platform is not only fundamentalistic and hawkish; it lacks the basis it needs for legitimacy. These guys are entertainers!

There is too much shame in the Republican Party.

Rubio goes far enough to humanize illegal immigrants; but his inability to translate that into a viable political position and a platform for efficient reform as well as what seems to be his inner desire to maintain a system that disenfranchises immigrants from integration makes it all too apparent that Rubio falls in line with the rest of his party on the issue of immigration, which is ironic because, while a vast number of Cuban & Latin-Americans identify with conservative politics, the majority tends to side with the Democrats, which is the more ethnically diverse and responsive party in the American political landscape today.

America is the greatest country on earth, without a shadow of a doubt. Even Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, vilified by US media outlets as an America-Hating tyrant, shared the sentiment, “America is the greatest country in the world”, during one of his more recent interviews with Charlie Rose. That being said, America is not perfect. Much like the countries from where most of these immigrants fled, America suffers from drawbacks. These drawbacks are reflections of the stubbornness of the elite to recognize the need for cultural integration. A more clear example of this stubbornness is the unwillingness of “White America” to acknowledge the dues it owes to the Black population. America tends to view itself as so exceptional that it excuses its own double-dealings. But that has bitten it in the foot. And the mass influx of illegal immigrants in modern times is just one among many symptoms of those decisions.

In an interview with Senator Rubio before announcing his candidacy in the 2016 race, Mexican-American journalist Jorge Ramos lambasts Rubio’s hypocrisy on the issue of immigration:

Your father was an illegal immigrant living in the US illegally until 1967. He eventually obtained status. Why did your grandfather receive the generosity and support of this country? Why don’t you do the same?

The realities Republicans ignore:

America is not perfect and is largely responsible for supporting the tyrannical policies and despots around the world which have robbed citizens of decent ways of life, thereby pressuring immigrants to leave their homes in search of a better place.

Immigrants are not free-loaders. I am an example. I’ve received no federal financial aid; have a working father (God Bless Him); and attend school by paying out of pocket.

The majority of Americans on welfare are White (a lot of them are conservatives who complain that socialism is taking over the country; the irony).

American exclusivism and austerity (when it comes to accessibility to public services) is incompatible with the founding American doctrines of liberalism, secularism & tolerance.

America remains a republic, and not a democracy; that is a representation of a minority (essentially apartheid) ideology so long as it rejects doctrine of universal humanism.

The GOP tactic is not new. It is a smear-tactic. Dehumanize the subject and justify exclusivism and social disenfranchisement. It is the face of old America, but if this is the “New World”, then perhaps we also need to make calls for a “New America”.

First, Israel is already a Jewish state, and second, from the perspective of its Arab citizens, it’s a state that’s already seen as a preferential rather than full democracy. And passage of this gratuitous and provocative new law will only widen the growing and still irreconcilable gap between the two.

But now in the highly charged world of Israel’s political right, it’s made its biggest advances to date in the effort to enshrine Israel’s Jewish identity, as one of its Basic Laws that provide the foundation for the country’s legal and political system in the absence of a formal constitution, which Israel does not have. The bill’s defenders (among them Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu) maintain that it states the obvious, is long overdue, and is also essential to making clear to the Arab world (and the Palestinians in particular) that there can be no right of return for Palestinians into Israel proper.

“The natural and best way is for the ‘national’ character of a state to be ensured by the very fact that it has a particular majority.” And, as if taking its cue from the Zionist leader, that’s just what the Israelis have done.

It’s a Jewish state not just through declarations but through deeds as well. History, tradition, law, symbols, and practice anchor Israel’s Jewish nation-state identity through its ancient biblical connections; centuries of exilotic longing; a Law of Return; a national anthem that puts a return to Jewish Zion upfront; a flag that depicts a Jewish prayer shawl and star of David; a Hebrew language unique to only one nation-state; and, above all, as Jabotinsky had hoped, a population of 8 million, 6 million-plus of whom are Jews. It’s hard to believe that despite the secular character of Israel that aliens arriving in Tel Aviv wouldn’t quickly realize that they had landed in a distinct nation-state run by Jewish Israelis.

And yet a series of laws (most notably the Law of Return and the 1952 Citizenship Law) explicitly favor Israeli Jews. Other administrative rules and regulations give preference to Jewish and Zionist organizations in matters relating to access to land and housing. Then there is systemic, institutional, and societal discrimination that simply does not ensureequal allocation of state budgets and symmetrical benefits to Arab and Jewish communities. The clear absence of a shared public square where Israeli Jews and Arabs can participate equally and take pride in the symbols of the state — national anthem, flag, state holidays — can only reinforce a sense of isolation and separation. That Israeli Arabs may well enjoy more rights than citizens of many Arab countries and would likely not choose to live elsewhere, including in a putative state of Palestine on the West Bank and Gaza, are often arguments used to rationalize their second-class status. But these arguments really don’t work. If you are a real democracy then you make a determined commitment to try to be one, and that means doing everything possible to ensure that all citizens of the stare are treated equally in a de jure and de facto manner too.

1. Either democracy is the enemy in the sense that it is, like communism, and other collective ideologies, a method of propagating fears to suppress individual innovation, self-faith, God, diversity and success out of envy and self-asceticism.

2. Perhaps the issue is gerrymandering or manufacturing of facts, by battling democracy through republican-esque funding and manufacturing consent.

3. Israel never intent on being a democracy and can’t be do to religious and exclusive foundation thus rendering it incompatible with modern institutions and international peace. Apartheid, not democracy.

4. Keep in mind total population of Palestinians in the world outnumbers the total number of Israelis: 11 million Palestinians to approximately 9 million Israelis. (If we want to count Jews then we ought to count Muslims, which would be no comparison). Obviously, the Palestinians are not in Israel and the majority have left Palestine due to the occupation; but this diaspora of refugees would not exist if Israel wasn’t there. Democracy, or apartheid?

“Israel is a relatively young country. If you looked at the United States in 1830, roughly 60 years after independence, you would have found a nation where women couldn’t vote (and many white males, too), blacks were slaves, and native Americans’ lands were seized and tribes forcibly relocated. In a way, Israel’s situation was much closer to America’s in the 1950s, when millions of African-Americans suffered de facto and de jure discrimination. So it’s critically important to give maturing democracies an opportunity to deal with inequalities and discriminatory policies. After all, it took America a full century and half, a civil war, and a bitterly contested civil rights movement to reconcile the promise contained in the Declaration of Independence with the reality that our Constitution validated chattel slavery. And by the looks of Ferguson, Missouri, we still have a ways to go before eliminating the patterns of racial discrimination in our system.”

Libertarian wave in America. Not sure if it’s a good thing. Label themselves crusaders of genuine freedoms; as does the Republican Party which takes us to war and deprives us of individual rights.

I am all for individual freedom but I don’t know if Libertarians bring anything new – they seem to echo the same message as republicans without having actual plans. All libertarians seem to do is point out the problem. They criticize. They judge. But they have no alternative – no solution – which makes me think their idea of what the problem is might be in fact wrong – which ultimately perpetuates these problems for all americans.

Rand Paul calls for low taxes and less government. He wants involvement in some conflicts abroad but not all. Well, dear Rand Paul, it seems you are part of the wrong political party because we are in involved in every country in the world precisely because of the Bush doctrine of preemption.

I am no fundamentalist by any means because I never want to feel like my beliefs are trampling on the freedom of another. I do respect self-reliance and I do acknowledge that in our world there is potential for certain people or groups to abuse the laws of nature and to use power for the wrong reasons – like starting war, protecting interests, for the sake of vanity, bigotry, greed, etc.

Why do you support the Republican Party? Why are you Islamo-phobes? Why don’t you acknowledge the flaws of anarchical-capitalism as exhibited first hand by close Bush-family ally Saudi Arabia? If you are champions of individual rights why do you discourage social liberty and promote conservative controls of human behavior?

Republicans and Libertarians love portraying Democrats as the anti-christ; as the enemies of individualism simply because they do not advocate it to such an extent that ends up violating the individual rights of others. You see dear friends, there is a huge difference between capitalism and imperialism – the latter being the product of fundamentalist-capitalism, bigotry, and fascism.

There is no perfect system, or ideology. Only God is perfect. The rest is subjective. We must deal with society with this in mind – distinguishing between true individualism and pseudo-individualism. The problem of today’s world is precisely that – the Pseudo.

Perhaps if the French asked themselves why fundamentalists are targeting French interests.

According to an article on France 24, french judges have suggested that jihadists in Mali are trying to portray France as the aggressor, while France insists that it is merely responding to extremists in the region.

The article failed to mention however any possible reason why these so-called jihadi extremists as they are so-quickly called are motivated to carry out such attacks against France.

Maybe its the same reason the people of Iran revolted in 1979′ against Western interventionism for reaping all of the nations’ oil wealth at the expense of the Iranian people.

I wonder if this has ANYTHING to do with it.

No, no. The French, like the Americans, will have you believe they are simply exporting Western-values of capitalism and democracy — the Crusader spirit, if you will.